“You a soldier in Vietnam. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“I know. I drive many soldiers.”
“Do they all get stopped and questioned?”
“No. Not many. They come out of building . . . you know? They come . . . how you say?”
“Alone? Late?”
“Yes. Late. Communists eat shit.” He broke into loud laughter, warming to his subject. “Communists eat dog shit.”
“Thank you. I get the picture.”
“Mister, why the soldier carry your bag?”
“I don’t know. What did he say?”
“He say you are American important person, but you are imperialist dog.”
“That’s not nice.”
“You important person?”
“I’m the leader of the American Communist Party.”
He got real quiet and shot some glances at me in the rearview mirror. He said, “Joke. Right? Joke?”
“Yes, joke.”
“No Communists in America.”
The conversation had a little entertainment value, but I was jet-lagged, tired, and cranky. I looked out the window. We were in old Saigon now, on a wide, well-lit boulevard whose street sign said Phan Dinh Phung. I seemed to recall that this boulevard passed the Catholic cathedral and in fact, I caught a glimpse of the cathedral spires over the low, French-style buildings.
My new friend said, “My father a soldier. He was American ami. You understand?”
“Biet,” I replied, in one of my few remembered Vietnamese words.
He glanced back at me, and we made eye contact. He nodded, turned back to his driving, and said, “He prisoner. Never see him again.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes. Fucking Communists. Yes?”
I didn’t reply. I was, I realized, more than tired. I was back. Thank you, Karl.
We turned onto Le Loi Street, Saigon’s main drag, and approached the Rex Hotel.
I never saw any of Saigon when I was an infantryman. It was off limits, except for official business, and the average grunt had no official business in Saigon. But during my brief tour as an MP, I got to know the city a little. It was, then, a lively place, but it was a besieged capital, and the lights were always dimmed, and the motor traffic was mostly military. Sandbags were piled up at strategic locations where Vietnamese police and soldiers kept an eye on things. Every restaurant and café had steel gratings in front of the windows to discourage the local Viet Cong on motor scooters from tossing satchel charges and grenades at the paying customers. Yet despite the war, there was a frenetic energy about the city, a sort of joie de vivre that you see, ironically, when death is right outside the walls, and the end is near.
This Saigon, this Ho Chi Minh City, looked frenetic, too, but without the wartime psychosis that used to grip the town each night. And, surprisingly, there were lighted advertisements all over the place—Sony, Mitsubishi, Coca-Cola, Peugeot, Hyundai—mostly Japanese, Korean, American, and French products. The Commies might eat shit, but they drank Coke.
The taxi stopped in front of the Rex, and my friend popped the trunk and got out.
A doorman opened my door while a bellboy grabbed the bags from the trunk. The doorman said in good English, “Welcome to the Rex, sir.”
My driver said to me, “Here my card. Mr. Yen. You call me. I show you all city. Good tour guide. Mr. Yen.”
The ride was four dollars, and I tipped Mr. Yen a buck.
Yen looked around to make sure no one was listening, and he said, “That man in airport is security police. He say he will see you again.” He jumped back in his taxi.
I entered the Rex Hotel.
The lobby of the Rex was a big, polished marble affair, with vaguely French architecture, and hanging crystal chandeliers. There were potted plants all over, and the air-conditioning worked. This was much nicer than Colonel Mang’s office.
I also noticed that the lobby was decorated for the Tet holiday, which I was here for in ’68 and ’72. There were lots of flowering fruit branches stuck in big vases, and a big kumquat tree in the center of the floor.
There were a few people in the lobby, but at this hour—it was after midnight—it was pretty quiet.
I went to the check-in desk where a nice young Vietnamese lady, whose nametag said Lan, greeted me, took my voucher, and asked for my passport. I gave her my visa, she smiled, and again asked for my passport.
I informed her, “The police have taken it.”
Her nice smile faded. She said, “I’m sorry, we need a passport to check you in.”
“If you don’t check me in, how will the police know where I am? I gave them this address.”
The logic of this impressed her, and she got on the horn and jabbered awhile, then came back to me and said, “We will need to hold your visa until you check out.”
“Fine. Don’t lose it.”
Lan began playing with her Japanese computer terminal. She said, “This is a busy season. It is the Tet holiday, and the weather is good for tourists.”
“It’s hot and sticky.”
“You must come from a cold climate. You will get used to it. Have you stayed with us before?”
“I walked past the place a few times in 1972.”
She glanced up at me, but didn’t reply. Lan found me a deluxe suite for my hundred and fifty bucks a night and handed the key to the bellboy. She said, “Have a pleasant stay, Mr. Brenner. Please let the concierge know if there is anything you need.”
I needed my passport, and to have my head examined, but I said, “Thank you.” I was not supposed to call or fax anyone regarding my safe arrival. Someone would call here, which they’d probably done already, and they were wondering why I hadn’t yet checked in.
Lan said to me, “Chuc Mung Nam Moi. Happy New Year.”
My Vietnamese was mostly forgotten, but my pronunciation was once good, and I was able to parrot her. “Chuc Mung Nam Moi.”
She smiled. “Very good.”
So, off I went toward the elevators with the bellboy. The Viets are basically pleasant people, polite, good-natured, and helpful. But beneath the placid, smiling Buddhist exterior lay a very short fuse.
Anyway, up the elevator to the sixth floor, down the wide hallway to a big door. The bellhop showed me into a nice suite with a sitting area, a view of Le Loi Street, and, thank God, a room bar. I gave him a buck and he left.
I hit the bar first and made myself a Chivas and soda with ice. This was just like a vacation, except for the bullshit at the airport and the fact that I could get arrested any minute for no reason, or for a good reason.
The room was decorated in what I call French Whorehouse, but it was big, and the bathroom had a stall shower. I examined my suitcase on the luggage stand and saw that everything was a mess. Same with my overnight bag.
Also, the bastards had taken the photocopies of my passport and visa. I guess they didn’t have their own copy machine. Yet nothing else had been taken, and I gave Colonel Mang and his stooge credit for honesty and professionalism, despite Pushy trying to shake me down for twenty bucks. In fact, I would have been more comfortable if Colonel Mang was just a cop on the take—but he was something else, and that gave me a little worry.
I hung my clothes, straightened things out, peeled off my clothes, and got into the shower. That silly song “Secret Agent Man” kept running through my jet-lagged brain, then a few tunes from the James Bond movies.
I got out of the shower and dried off. I’d planned to check out the city, but I was barely conscious. I fell into bed and blacked out before I could turn off the lamp.
For the first time in many years, I had a war dream, a combat dream, complete with the sounds of M-16s, AK-47s, and the terrible chatter of a machine gun.
I awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I made myself a double Scotch and sat in a chair, naked and cold, and watched the sun rise over the Saigon River.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I went to a late breakfast in the hotel?
??s coffee lounge, and the hostess gave me a copy of the Viet Nam News, a local English-language publication. I sat, ordered a coffee, and looked at the headline, which read, “When U.S. Confidence Received a Major Blow.” I had the feeling this newspaper might have a slant.
The headline story was written by a Colonel Nguyen Van Minh, a military historian. It said, “On this day in 1968, our army and people launched an attack against enemy strongholds at Khe Sanh. The attack shocked the United States and forced President Lyndon Johnson and the Pentagon to focus on coping with us at Khe Sanh.”
I seemed to recall the incident because I was there. I read on and learned that the U.S. forces “suffered a severe and humiliating defeat.” I didn’t remember that part of it, but whoever controls the present, controls the past, and they’re welcome to it.
I had trouble following the bad translation as well as the logic in this article, but I was interested to see a mention of my division, the First Air Cavalry, that was translated as “The Flying Cavalry Division Number One.” More interestingly, the war was still news here, as I already discovered from Colonel Mang.
I looked around. The other guests seemed to be mostly Japanese and Korean, but there were a number of Westerners, and I heard French and English spoken. Saigon, it seemed, was making a comeback.
I checked out the menu, which was in a variety of languages and came with photos, just in case. None of the photos showed dogs or cats, or half-formed chick embryos, as I remembered from last time. I ordered the American breakfast and hoped for the best.
I finished breakfast and went to the front desk where I inquired about my passport. The clerk looked and said, “No, sir.” Neither were there any messages. I suppose I half expected a fax from Cynthia. I went out onto Le Loi Street.
Coming out of the cool, dimly lit lobby of the Rex into the hot sunlight was a bit of a shock: the sudden roar of the motor scooters, the continuous horn honking, the exhaust fumes, and the mass of people, bicycles, and motor vehicles. Wartime Saigon had been somehow quieter, except for the occasional explosion.
I began walking the streets of Saigon, and within ten minutes, I was sweating like a pig. I had a map from the front desk, and I had my camera slung over my shoulder. I wore cotton khakis, a green golf shirt, and running shoes. In fact, I looked like a dopey American tourist, except that most American tourists wear shorts wherever they go.
Saigon did not seem overly dirty, but neither was it real clean. The buildings were still mostly two to five stories high, but I noticed that a few skyscrapers had sprung up. Some of the architecture in the center was old French Colonial, as I recalled, but most of the city remained nondescript stucco with perpetually peeling paint. The city had some charm by day, but I remembered it mostly for its sinister and dangerous nights.
Traffic was heavy, but moved well, like choreographed chaos. The only vehicles that weren’t playing by the rules were military vehicles, and yellow, open jeep-like police vehicles, all bullying their way through the streets, scattering everything in front of them. This hadn’t changed much since last time, only the markings on the vehicles were different. You can always tell a police state, or a country at war, by how government vehicles move through the streets.
The most predominant form of transportation now, as well as then, were the motor scooters, whose riders were almost all young, men and women, driving in a predictably insane manner. The biggest difference now was that nearly everyone was talking on their cell phones.
I recalled when any of these men or women could suddenly produce a grenade or a satchel, and chuck it at a café without screening, a military truck, a police booth, or a bunch of drunken soldiers, American or Vietnamese. These new cell phone cyclists seemed a danger only to themselves.
The city was bustling because of the approaching Tet holidays, which to the Viets is like Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one, plus they all celebrate their birthdays on New Year’s Day, and everyone is a year older, like thoroughbred horses, no matter when they were born.
The streets were jammed with vendors selling flowers, branches of peach and apricot buds, and miniature kumquat trees. A lot of the vendors thought I needed these things for some reason, and they tried to entice me into buying fruit branches to carry around.
Some streets were crowded with stalls where vendors sold greeting cards saying Chuc Mung Nam Moi, and I thought about buying one for Karl and adding the words Phuc Yu.
The streets were also packed with cyclos, a uniquely Vietnamese form of transportation, a sort of bicycle with a one-seat passenger compartment up front. The driver pedals and steers from the rear, which is exciting. The cyclo drivers really wanted a Western fare, and they were bugging me to hop in and relax as they followed me through traffic and masses of people.
There were also swarms of kids circling me like piranha, pulling on my arms and clothes, begging for a thousand dong. I kept saying, “Di di! Di di mau! Mau len!,” and so forth. But my pronunciation must have been bad because they acted like I was saying, “Come closer, children. Come bother the big My for dong.” You could get people fatigue real fast here.
I found a street that I recalled from 1972, a narrow lane near the Cholan district, the city’s Chinatown. This street was once lined with bars, brothels, and massage parlors, but now it was quiet, and I guessed that all the nice girls had spent a little time in re-education camps, atoning for their sins, and now they were all real estate brokers. I’d been on this street as an MP, of course, not as a customer.
I took a few photos as I walked, but I’d determined that I wasn’t being followed, so all this tourist stuff was kind of wasted, unless I got Karl to sit through five hours of slides back in Virginia.
I got my bearings and headed toward the Museum of American War Crimes, which Colonel Mang had urged me to visit.
Within fifteen minutes, I found the place on the grounds of a former French villa that had once housed, ironically, the United States Information Service during the war. I paid a buck and went into the compound, where a big, rusting American M-48 tank sat on the grass. It was quieter here, there were no beggars or hawkers, and I found myself actually happy to be at the Museum of American War Crimes.
I looked around at the displays, which were mostly photos housed in various stucco buildings, and it was all pretty depressing and sickening: photos of the My Lai massacre, horribly mutilated women and children, deformed infants who were victims of Agent Orange, the famous photo of the naked girl running down the road burned by American napalm, the photo of the South Vietnamese officer blowing out the brains of a captured Viet Cong in Saigon during the ’68 Offensive, a child sucking at the breast of his dead mother, and so on.
There was also a rogues gallery: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, American generals including my division commander, John Tolson, and pro-war politicians, plus photos of anti-war protesters all over the world, and policemen and soldiers knocking college kids around, the Kent State shootings, and on and on. The captions in English didn’t say much, but they didn’t have to.
There were a lot of photos of the major American anti-war figures of the day: Senator John Kerry from my home state, who’d served in ’Nam at the same time I did in ’68, Eugene McCarthy, Jane Fonda manning a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, and so forth.
There was also a display of American war medals sent to Hanoi by the recipients as a protest against the war.
I could hear the Sixties screaming in my head.
I found a particularly disturbing photographic collection with an accompanying text. The photos showed hundreds of men being lined up, shot by a firing squad, then getting the coup de grâce with a pistol. But this wasn’t another American or South Vietnamese war crime. The text explained that the victims were South Vietnamese soldiers, and pro-American hill tribespeople, the Montagnards, who’d continued the fight against the victorious Communists after the surrender of Saigon.
The text described the Montagnards as belonging to t
he FULRO, the Front Unitié de Lutte des Races Opprimées—the United Front for the Struggle of the Oppressed Races, a CIA-sponsored group of bandits and criminals, according to the caption. These photographs of the cold-blooded executions were supposed to serve as a lesson to anyone who had any thoughts about opposing the government. Actually, these photographs were not much different than the others showing American atrocities. The Hanoi government was obviously clueless about how these photographs would play to a Western audience. In fact, an American woman standing next to me seemed pale and shocked into silence.
As I looked at all this stuff, I wasn’t sure what I felt. This was obviously an unbalanced presentation, omitting, for instance, the Communist massacres at Hue, and the one at Quang Tri City that I saw with my own eyes.
I’d seen enough and went out into the sunlight.
The people around the museum were mostly American, and they were divided by generation; the older men, obviously veterans, were angry, and some of them were swearing about the “one-sided, propaganda bullshit,” to use one overheard phrase. Some of the veterans were with wives and children, and they were a little quieter.
Well, enough fun for one afternoon. I walked toward the exit, and noticed souvenir stands selling pieces of army munitions, flower vases made out of shell casings, old American dog tags, and models of Huey helicopters made from scrap aluminum, like works of origami. I saw old Zippo lighters, engraved with the names of their previous GI owners, along with mottoes, unit crests, and so forth. I spotted a lighter that was engraved with the same thing that mine was engraved with: Death is my business, and business has been good. I still owned the lighter, but I’d left it home.
I went out through the gate onto Vo Van Tan Street and turned back toward the center of the city.
Now and then, out of the corner of my eye, and the corner of my mind, I’d see the remnants of the once proud ARVN—the Army of the Republic of Vietnam; middle-aged men who looked ancient, missing legs and arms, blind, lame, scarred, stooped and broken. Some begged from fixed spots in the shade. Some just sat and didn’t bother to beg.